Ben Cruachan – natural history

Both Peter and myself have had our noses to the grindstone lately, but today we broke out for a birding trip. We hadn’t been in to the Green Gully this spring so that’s where we went with high hopes. We knew there was a nice flow going down the Freestone Creek which we had to cross to get to the gully, but we weren’t prepared for the sight that greeted us as we made our way down to the ford. There had obviously been a huge flood down the creek, the track was completely washed away, and after we had waded across, what was formerly a pleasant walk through bird-rich shrubbery was just a tangled mess of fallen scrub and flood rubbish. Click to enlarge.

After bashing our way through it we eventually came to the track where it left the creek, and apart from the odd fallen tree it was then good going, except that we weren’t seeing many birds. An Olive-backed Oriole was calling, and then we spotted a pair just off the track, they’re handsome birds. We were hoping for flycatchers as the gully has been quite reliable for them in the past, and as we moved on along the track we started to hear interesting calls up ahead. Golden and Rufous Whistlers made an appearance, a male of the latter was feeding a juvenile, and then we saw White-naped Honeyeaters also feeding youngsters. While we were taking all this in Peter suddenly called “flycatcher” and we were soon both watching a brilliant Satin Flycatcher *. The birding was coming good with a vengeance the further we walked, and the best was yet to come, we’d been hearing a bird calling, three downward slurs, and we were getting close. Then a movement in the foliage had our bins swinging up, and there it was, a Black-faced Monarch *, a new record for the gully, and not a bird we expected to see. The rain forest in Nargun’s Den is a reliable place to see them, but I’ve often wondered if we could start to see them in some of the deeper gullies to the west. They couldn’t come to a nicer place than the Green Gully, click to enlarge.

Being the last day of spring, the main show of wildflowers is over, but in the coolness of the gully, bluebells, Wahlenbergia sp. were blooming, and Twining Glycine, Glycine clandestina was another attractive splash of colour.

The shrilling of cicadas had been a constant accompaniment to our birding and occasionally we saw one of the big insects flying, the Kookaburras were relishing the food source and we saw one bird gulping one down. We finished with a modest total of twenty three species, but two of them were standouts, I didn’t get photos of either, too busy watching them!

* The Black-faced Monarch and Satin Flycatcher are spring / summer breeding migrants in East Gippsland, they winter in the north and return to the same locality each year. The Satin Flycatcher migrates across Bass Strait and is often seen on the offshore oil rigs where it stops to refuel on insects attracted to the lights. The Black-faced Monarch has previously been only occasional west of Nargun’s Den, whether this bird was one of those, or the beginning of a westerly range extension remains to be seen.